"Abortion Affiliates" Banned From the New Texas Women's Health Program, But Doctors Allowed To Talk About Abortion

The new Texas Women's Health Program is really going to be special. And by "special," we mean terrible. But as the Texas Tribune reports , state officials have made one tiny concession in response to complaints from women's advocacy and medical groups: Doctors will now be allowed to discuss the existence of abortion with their patients.

The abortion affiliate ban has been officially put into place. The newly released rules for the TWHP say that overall the program "will favor childbirth and family planning services that do not include elective abortion or the promotion of elective abortion."
You can see this new rule in the Texas Register, where these types of state policy changes are recorded. The introduction to the new TWHP rules also pledges to "avoid the direct or indirect use of state funds to promote or support elective abortion."

Under these rules, abortions are not considered to be "elective" when a pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, when it endangers a woman's life or when the fetus has a severe abnormality that is "incompatible with life outside the womb." TWHP doctors will presumably be allowed to perform abortions under those circumstances.

New Health and Human Services Commissioner Kyle Janek said Thursday that the proposed rule banning physicians from talking about abortion will not be put into place after all.

The final wording says TWHP doctors can't call abortion providers on behalf of their patients, but can provide their names and contact information. Doctors who are in private practice with abortion providers, but don't perform them themselves, will also be allowed into the program. The new rules go into effect November 1.

"Doctors who are in private practice with abortion providers, but don't perform them themselves, will also be allowed into the program. "

Check me if I'm wrong, but by my reckoning, this little clarification here will make it legally very difficult to ban PP from the program. Thanks to the Supreme Court recognizing corporations as individual "persons" in the eyes of the law, TX will have to treat the two separate corporate entities with PP branding as two separate healthcare providers. So, on the one side, PP can continue to be a valuable women's health resource and part of a tax payer funded program, like it has been for many years. And, on the other hand, PP can still provide a valuable, yet elective abortion service, outside of taxpayer funded programs, like it has been for many years.

If I'm right, TX has gone through this whole idiotic scenario to get us right back where we started from, minus the Federal monies. Good Job Guv!

Has anybody ever tried to explain to AdiosMoFo that Federal Medicaid dollars are paid out of the paychecks of Texans, and therefore should not be forfeited? It's better to bring that money back into Texas for medical care for Texans.

It's sad and pathetic that my state strong-arms this bullshit though a public program that ignores educating patients of legal (and optional) procedures and tries to circumvent the Constitutional rights of women.

Roe V. Wade still stands, assholes. Deal with it. Take it up with the US Supreme Court. Good luck with that.

@RTGolden1 That's the idea behind banning "abortion affiliates" from the program. It's language that will really only apply to PP, as far as I can tell. This entire thing is just to get them out of the program.

@MattL11 They went much farther than that. Their original idea was to prohibit a doctor from discussing a legal, regulated, relatively safe and effective medical procedure AND to further slap the Constitution in the face, require the doctor to present the patient with thinly veiled religious propaganda. It will be interesting how this shakes out. I'm guessing TX will be back in the SC over this one at least two more times before all's said and done.

No, they don't. But that hasn't stopped the Governor and the Texas Legislature from trying. In fact, they passed a law in the 2008 session that required doctors to tell patients that abortions caused breast cancer, even after the National Cancer Institute and AMA completed a long study totally disproving the theory.

It seems that Li'l Ricky isn't even bothered by such trivia as our own State Constitution.

It seems to me that by definition that any bill or act by the Legislature to deny funding to Planned Parenthood because it has a division that performs elective abortions is by definition a bill of attainder.

@Anna_Merlan Well, by that reasoning, a doctor who shares a practice with a doctor who performs abortions would be the affiliate of an abortion provider, right?

I'm glad you're covering this story. The usual Texas political tactic of 'wait until the furor dies down, then do what you want', doesn't seem to be working for the Guv. this time. From your story here, and the way they're wording their explanations, they seem to have talked themselves into a corner. Even more ironic that it was a Republican victory in Citizens United that re-affirmed the corporate identity as a 'person'. They're going to look rather silly trying to explain how a corporation can be a person when donating to campaigns, but not be a person when providing a service.

@RTGolden1@MattL11 If the Texas Gov't were doing such between a patient paying for their own care, you might have a point. As soon as hte taxpayers' money is involved, not so much. Taxpayers paying the costs ought to be the boss.